It may well be questioned whether we are really in a position to separate the Hellenistic schools as definitely and surely as we can separate the Attic and Peloponnesian schools of the fifth and fourth centuries or the earlier local schools of the sixth. In the Hellenistic age we find a far greater uniformity and cosmopolitanism in art than ever before. The conquests of Alexander had been in the long run Panhellenic, and outside the mainland at any rate the title Greek came at last to mean more than merely a man’s city or state. It has therefore been argued by some critics that we must not expect to find the same local distinctions in Hellenistic art. In a cosmopolitan world with easy communications local and separate developments were no longer possible. This position is plausible, and so far as the question of ideals or even types is concerned there is little to choose between the Hellenistic schools. The so-called Hellenistic reliefs are probably of very diverse origin; the Hellenistic love for genre scenes and for the grotesque appears to be universally indulged; the erotic groups of Pergamon were certainly equally popular in Alexandria; the influence of painting and the adaptation of earlier sculptural types are found in all parts of the Aegean world. But there does seem to be a distinction in technical execution between the three great schools of the period, which is sufficient to justify their consideration in three separate chapters. While Pergamon is predominantly subject to the Scopaic-Praxitelean mixed tradition with an especial fondness for extremely clear-cut work and soft finish, Rhodes appears to be equally faithful to the Lysippic athletic tradition, and Alexandria to a strongly impressionist development of Praxitelean ideas joined to a fondness for unsparing realism in the grotesque, a combination not infrequent in the decadence of art. For Alexandrian art, more than any of the others, deserves the title of decadent through its abandonment of every vestige of idealism in motive.

We know the connexion of Alexandria with Athens was close in the late fourth century, especially during the rule of Demetrios of Phaleron in its closing decades. It was at this time that Bryaxis made the Sarapis (Fig.12), which has perhaps survived for us in the innumerable copies of a wild-haired, heavily bearded head with shadowed mysterious eyes. During the next century Macedonia was the chief foe of Athens and of the Ptolemies, and all the earlier Egyptian rulers were on close terms of friendship with the city. Thus a predominant influence of Athens and of the greatest of the fourth-century Athenian sculptors, Praxiteles, is only what we should anticipate in Alexandrian art. It has, however, been argued that we have no evidence for a native art of Alexandria at all.34 While importing much late Attic sculpture, she borrowed also from Pergamon works like the Gaul’s head at Cairo,35 and from Antioch a group like the Dresden Aphrodite with the Triton.36 She was in fact a collecting rather than an originating centre.

This view is improbable on many grounds. The Egyptians were a people with a keen artistic sense, and the sudden introduction of a new race like the Greeks with their passion for cultural expression could hardly fail to give an impetus to artistic output. Moreover, a great revival in architecture is noticeable all over Egypt. The Ptolemaic age is one of the great building periods of the Nile valley. Further, our authorities are unanimous on the importance and brilliance of the Alexandrian school of painting, and we know that in gem-cutting Pyrgoteles started a development never surpassed in antiquity or modern times. In literature, in criticism, and in science the museum of Alexandria held the chief place, and it is impossible to suppose that Egypt remained a mere collector of sculpture without any original development of her own. We must, therefore, examine the artistic products of Hellenistic Egypt to see if they exhibit any technical peculiarities marking them off from other Hellenistic centres and compelling us to credit them with a local origin.

Any study of the sculpture of Alexandrian origin reveals one characteristic almost invariably present in serious work, as opposed to the grotesque, and absent from the certified products of other centres. This is that quality of slurring over all sharp detail in the features and producing a highly polished, almost liquidly transparent surface for which we have borrowed the Italian term morbidezza.37 Instances of this highly impressionist treatment are to be found in the British Museum head of Alexander from Alexandria, and also in the Sieglin head from the same place; in the Triton head of the Dresden Alexandrian group of Triton and Aphrodite; in the many Anadyomene copies which are mostly connected with Alexandria, such for instance as the beautiful statue recently found in Cyrenaica (Fig.11); in girls’ heads from Alexandria in Copenhagen and Dresden. In most of these works and in many others the soft transparent quality of the face is matched by a quite rough impressionist blocking-out of the hair. Thus we find both the characteristics of Praxitelean impressionism, the rough hair and the soft liquid gaze, exaggerated and intensified in Alexandrian sculpture. While the female hair of Pergamene art is invariably clear-cut and rope-like, Alexandrian hair is normally of the rough crinkly Praxitelean type, sometimes merely formal, at others more complicated and complete. This impressionist character of Alexandrian sculpture is borne out by what we know of its painting, and is doubtless due to some extent to the great influence of painting on sculpture as well as to the influence of Praxiteles.

Another technical point about Alexandrian sculpture is connected with the local conditions of the country. Egypt is not a country of marble, and therefore the artists had to be economical in the use of it. This is probably the reason why so many Alexandrian heads have the faces complete in marble but the hair added separately in stucco, where the colouring would render the difference in material hardly noticeable. Thus many statues of Alexandrian origin have large pieces of the upper part of their heads smoothed away and left for the addition of stucco. This phenomenon is not confined to Alexandrian art, though it is much commoner at Alexandria than elsewhere, and where we find it in combination with the other qualities of impressionism and morbidezza already noticed we may feel fairly confident in claiming an Alexandrian origin for the work in question.

This theory is admirably illustrated in the beautiful little head of a girl from Chios recently acquired by the Boston Museum (Fig.13). The head shows us an extreme degree of morbidezza in the softening of all the sharper facial lines such as eyelids and lips. The face is seen almost through a slight haze, and it thus gets some of the impression conveyed by distance. Where the head is worked it is quite rough and formal in purely impressionist style, but most of the hair was to be added in stucco, as the sharp cuts on the upper part of the head demonstrate. The head has been attributed too enthusiastically to Praxiteles himself. It is good work, but it is not by the author of the Hermes. The too mechanical smile and the too formal cheeks show a less masterly touch. But it is a perfect embodiment of Alexandrian art about 300 B.C. and must be unhesitatingly attributed to its real origin. We see a general copy of the Praxitelean long face with eyes about the centre of the head, Praxitelean proportions, and Praxitelean head-type.

Another head of Alexandrian origin is the fine bearded head of the Capitol Museum (Fig.14), which is really almost a mask with the whole of the top and sides of the head left for stucco additions. The rough blocking of the beard shows the artist’s impressionist leanings. The long face is purely Attic, though perhaps closer to Bryaxis or some later artist than to Praxiteles. The head is more or less akin to the Sarapis head and to the other much finer bearded head which stands in close relation to the Sarapis, the well-known Zeus of Otricoli (Fig.15). In the Otricoli head we have a similar prominence of the cheek-bones, a similar narrowing of the forehead above the frontal sinus—Attic features but not Praxitelean. The Otricoli Zeus is also a marble work cut for stucco additions, some of which are still visible, and we should probably recognize in it another work of early Alexandrian origin. It is perhaps not too daring to see the prototype of these Attic-shaped non-Praxitelean Alexandrian bearded heads in the Sarapis of Bryaxis.38 Bryaxis or some other late Attic artist seems to have affected the bearded male type of Alexandria much as Praxiteles influenced the feminine ideal. Nottingham Castle contains a bearded head from Nemi,39 which belongs to the same class of work. Here again we have the hair added in stucco and a general resemblance to the Otricoli type.

One of the new Greco-Alexandrian types was naturally the goddess Isis. A head in the Louvre (Fig.16) gives us a version of this figure, which still, even in a poor Roman copy, shows us something of the languid elegance of the original. There is no traceable influence of Scopas in Alexandrian art. The Praxitelean and Attic tradition was transferred pure, and therefore the liveliness of movement and action in Pergamene art is quite absent from the art of Alexandria. Statues are mainly small, partly perhaps for economy, and partly from the lack of all desire for comparison with the gigantic masterpieces of ancient Egypt, and they are limited to simple standing or seated poses. An interesting statue of obvious Alexandrian origin is the priest of Isis in the Capitol (Fig.17), which has been wrongly restored with a female head. This head is itself Alexandrian, as its hair demonstrates, but it has no connexion with the body, which is male, though draped in a light clinging tunic.40 The tunic is interesting as giving us a good example of Alexandrian drapery. We may notice the very small closely set folds, and the extreme realistic care with which the loose parts of the drapery are distinguished from those tightly stretched. There is an element of artificiality no doubt in the way in which the folds radiate from the great jar carried against the chest and in their close symmetry of design, but as a whole the effect of texture is marvellously well secured. We have here a good example of the naturalism which now plays a large part in Alexandrian art.

Another statue which we must claim for Alexandrian art is the Capitoline Venus (Fig.18), an extremely interesting statue not only as a first-rate original but from its relation to the Cnidian goddess of Praxiteles. The face and the hair show the usual qualities of Alexandrian impressionism; the fringed mantle thrown over the water-pot is the mantle of the Egyptian Isis, and the foreshortening of the foot of the amphora is just the pictorial touch we expect in Alexandrian art. But the most interesting light which this statue throws on Alexandrian art is its directness and want of subtlety in motive. The goddess of Cnidos is naked, but she is only half-conscious of her nakedness. Her eyes are fixed on eternity, and the actual bath is a mere accessory like the child of the Hermes. But the Capitoline goddess is not thinking of eternity at all. She is stepping into her bath, and is suddenly aware of a spectator’s gaze. She is the classical counterpart of Susannah in Renaissance art. All the vague beauty of the Attic statue is lost by the touch of Alexandrian realism, which amounts almost to vulgarity. As to the treatment of the body it is again real and not ideal. The back in particular shows a close study of the model without any of the selective idealism of classical art. Like the beautiful torso in Syracuse41 it is a marvellous study from nature, not marked by any vestige of idealism.

Another head in the Capitol, the so-called Ariadne (Fig.19), perhaps really a Dionysos, also suggests an Alexandrian origin with its long face, eyes close together, and crinkly hair.42 It is a very favourite Roman head often copied, and must belong to some famous original. It wears a band, which presses into the hair, and its sleepy languid gaze is remarkable. This is produced by making the upper eyelid nearly straight and the lower one well curved. The face is long and heavy. Both eye-shape and head recall the Boston girl from Chios and other Alexandrian statues. The surface of the face is highly polished, the hair left crinkly and rough—an Alexandrian procedure. If we can accept this head, we must class with it two heads of identical facial type, the Eubouleus of Eleusis43 sometimes attributed to Praxiteles, and the so-called Inopos from Delos in the Louvre (Fig.20). Alexandrian dedications might plausibly be expected at Delos and Eleusis. Both Inopos and Eubouleus are highly impressionist. We have said enough to show that what we may call the serious art of Alexandria had certain characteristics of technique and execution, which render not impossible an attempt to classify and arrange an Alexandrian school of sculpture. We must now turn to another side of Alexandrian art which, if of less artistic interest, is nevertheless of paramount importance in our study of Hellenistic art.

The people of Alexandria were noted in the ancient world as scoffers and cynics. Their temper was fiery, their jests were brutal, and reverence of any kind was unknown to them. A cosmopolitan medley of Greek, Macedonian, native Egyptian, Jew, and every nation of the East, they were united only in their utter diversity of point of view and their scepticism of all ideal obligation. To such a people caricature and a love of the grotesque were almost second nature. By the side of the greater art of Alexandria it is easy to discern a lesser art of comic, grotesque, and obscene statuettes of every description. Greek realism in portraiture went back to the Pellichos of Demetrios with his great paunch and scanty hair in the early fourth century.44 With the end of the century the satyr was a recognized medium for every variety of the baroque and the macabre in expression. But in Alexandria above all the grotesque exaggeration of natural defects found its true popularity. The negro, the hunchback, the drunkard, the crÉtin of every kind, became popular artistic models. As if the delineation of youth and beauty was exhausted, the Hellenistic sculptors of Alexandria rushed into the portrayal of disease, of old age, and of mutilation in every form. They suffered as much as any modern decadent from ‘la nostalgie de la boue’. Here again we must beware of attributing to Alexandria all the grotesque figures of Hellenistic art and all its pieces of most painful naturalism. Pergamon, if not Rhodes, and doubtless Antioch must have played their part in the commonest form of artistic decadence; but we have so much of this work certified as Alexandrian, that we are justified in regarding Egypt as its chief and most popular home. Works of this type fall into two classes: the purely grotesque and the extremely naturalistic. The former class is more or less confined to statuettes, of which a number are collected in Perdrizet’s Bronzes grecs d’Egypte de la Collection Fouquet, and the account of the Mahdia ship in Monuments Piot for 1909 and 1910. These include gnomes, pygmies, dwarfs (Fig.21), and little obscene figures of all kinds. Needless to say, Praxitelean qualities of morbidezza and impressionism have no place in art of this kind. We may presume that the demand was primarily foreign and not Greek, though all the skill of Greek sculpture is employed in the faultless execution of many of them. Their Alexandrian origin is better attested than that of the second class of extremely naturalistic works.

The latter are more important and more interesting. They include some of the most skilful works of sculpture ever achieved. The splendid negro’s head of Berlin45 and the fisherman of the Louvre are of undoubted Alexandrian origin, but such works as the fisherman and the peasant woman of the Conservatori46 or the old women of the Capitol and of Dresden are not so clear in their origin. When we get a statue of this type, combined with some clearly Alexandrian quality, such as the so-called Diogenes of the Villa Albani47—a naked beggar carried out with fine realism but also with considerable morbidezza and impressionism—we may claim an Alexandrian origin; but impressionism is rare among such statues, as the artists seem to love to dwell on every detail. We may, however, regard them as a single class irrespective of their individual origin. The Louvre fisherman48 deserves careful study for its absolutely unsparing truth to nature. The slackness of skin caused by long wading in water, the swelling of the veins through hard work, the feebleness and hollowness of chest due to old age or disease, the coarse peasant’s head, in which each wrinkle is faithfully delineated, deserve our wonder if not our admiration. The little companion pair in the Conservatori, though inferior in workmanship as Roman copies, are also full of interest for their vitality and truth. Finest of all perhaps is the splendid old woman’s head in Dresden (Fig.22), with its marvellous mimicry of the ravages of age. Such art is decadent, because it is pessimistic, cynical, and unhappy, and because it refuses to select and idealize as it might do even in studies of decay; but of its brilliant execution there can be no doubt. Only the Chinese have made grotesques which can rank with the products of Alexandria.

This is a convenient place for dealing with the great series of Hellenistic reliefs, though it is no longer possible to maintain that these have a uniform and common origin either in Alexandria or in Imperial Rome.49 We have seen their beginning in the Telephos frieze, the first to show us a pictorial background and an episodic mythological treatment. The appearance of the relief panel as a self-sufficient whole without architectural background is an invention of the Hellenistic age as early as the third century B.C., but it continues as an artistic force right through Roman into mediaeval and modern art. Certainly not even the Hellenistic reliefs have a common origin, but it is not impossible that Alexandria was the home of one class of them, the pre-eminently pastoral scenes like the Grimani reliefs in Vienna (Fig.23). Alexandria was the greatest city of the Hellenistic world and the farthest from any conception of the pastoral life of the country. It is, therefore, possible that the rise of the pastoral tendency in art was connected with the Alexandrian craving for novelty and variety in a sphere of which it knew nothing. It is certain that the pastoral poems of Theocritos delighted the citizens of Alexandria, and the Hellenistic pastoral relief is strictly analogous to the poems of Theocritos. It shows a countryside of the Watteau type with satyrs and nymphs to correspond to the shepherds and shepherdesses of the court of Louis XIV. It is an artificial country without a touch of the reality of nature. Thus the pastoral reliefs and the poems of Theocritos represent the one element of idealism in the materialistic culture of Alexandria.

The Hellenistic reliefs may be divided into three classes: the pastoral reliefs such as the scenes showing sheep and a lioness and cubs, called the Grimani reliefs, in Vienna; mythological reliefs like the Bellerophon and Pegasus of the Palazzo Spada,50 or Perseus and Andromeda of the Capitol51 in Rome; and more complicated little scenes or groups like the Menander relief of the Lateran,52 the Apotheosis of Homer,53 the slaying of the Niobids,54 or the visit of Dionysos to a dramatic poet.55 They are all closely related to painting—how closely a reference to Pompeian wall-paintings or mosaics like the famous Praenestine pavement will show—but there are some differences between the groups which are worthy of mention. The pastoral scenes are straightforward and naturalistic. The little group of a countryman driving a cow past a ruined temple in Munich is a good example of straightforward naturalism. The mythological reliefs are usually distinctly affected in style. The gesture with which Perseus receives Andromeda is like that of an exquisite handing a lady from her carriage. Bellerophon waters his horse with a nonchalant air.56 Daedalos and Icaros57 present a curious mixture of affectation and realism. But it may now be regarded as certain that the Spada reliefs are Augustan in date at the earliest, and the affectation may well be imported. This is, indeed, partially demonstrated by a comparison of the two copies of the Daedalos-Icaros group in the Villa Albani, of which one is Roman, the other probably late Hellenistic. At the same time it is remarkable that the figures of the mythological reliefs all show the long slender proportions of Lysippos. This at once suggests a Rhodian connexion. Mythological groups are favourites in Rhodes, and it is the one place where the Lysippic tradition certainly lasted. It is not a wholly hazardous suggestion to propose a Rhodian origin for the mythological, and an Alexandrian origin for the pastoral, reliefs. One might be tempted, therefore, to ascribe the most intimate and domestic scenes to Pergamon, but there is insufficient evidence for proof at present, though the reliefs deserve careful study with these possible divisions in mind.

In general we can only point out their fine naturalism and perfect execution. Their artists seem to have mastered all the problems of perspective and to deal with the third dimension as easily as with the other two. It is natural to notice some advance in freedom of style. The earlier reliefs, like the Telephos frieze, or the Dolon relief,58 are in less pronounced relief and with less carefully conceived perspective. Later reliefs like the so-called Menander relief show some of the figures in part detached from the background, while the perspective of a group is most subtly graded. We may compare the finest of them with the bronze doors of the Florentine Baptistery and their marvellous panels.

We are still left with one important monument of Alexandrian art which perhaps can be treated most fitly in connexion with the pastoral reliefs—the great statue of the Nile in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican (Fig.24). The god lies out at length supported on his elbow, and little boys, representing the cubits of his annual rise, play about over him. The work is a Roman copy, and tells us little of technique, but the putti are interesting as a typical Hellenistic development. This is the period in which Eros, who has been growing steadily younger from the youth of Praxiteles to the boy of Lysippos, turns finally into the chubby Roman Cupid or Amorino of Renaissance art. As such he helps Aphrodite in her toilet or performs all manner of tasks in the fine frieze of Erotes at Ephesos. It is the logical ending of the transformation of mythology into genre. Alexandrian art is essentially mundane and frivolous, sceptical and humorous. Her artists would have appreciated the earlier Pergamene developments, but they would have laughed at the clumsy idealism of the great altar frieze. Nor would they have felt much sympathy with the athletic art of Rhodes.

We may perhaps consider here the little we know of the art of Antioch, since it has certain points in common with that of Alexandria. The chief monument used in all discussion of Antiochene art is the statue of Antioch59 on the Orontes, made by Eutychides, a pupil of Lysippos. A small copy of this in the Vatican shows us a fine seated figure crowned with the turreted crown, who rests her foot on a little male figure with outstretched arms representing the stream of the Orontes. Unfortunately the copy is too small to give us much information about the artist, though he seems to have used the same idea for another statue of the Eurotas. We have, however, a figure of Aphrodite from Egypt (Fig.25), which shows a supporting Triton in an attitude indubitably connected with the figure of the Orontes. This is an Egyptian work, but it argues some artistic connexion between Alexandria and the Seleucid capital. Another link is given us by the statement60 that the Apollo at Daphne near Antioch was made by Bryaxis, the author of the Alexandrian Sarapis.

Antioch, though like Alexandria in many respects—in her turbulent population, her cosmopolitanism, her irreverence for all authority—seems never to have developed the cultured love of literature and the arts which we find at Pergamon and on the Nile. She remained in all probability a collector and not an originator of art. The glimpses which we can get of her statues indicate a catholic taste. The Apollo seated on the Omphalos, which decorates the Seleucid coins, resembles the Lysippic type, and a Herakles type, also found on Syrian coins and reproduced in the bronze colossus of the Conservatori, has some connexion with the later Sikyonian school. By the side of these we must place the Apollo of Bryaxis.

Ephesos, a strong place more or less at the meeting-point of three empires, has left us considerable remains of Hellenistic art. Her bronze athlete at Vienna (Fig.26) belongs to a later development of the Scopaic school; her frieze of Erotes61 is more in the Alexandrian manner. Some beautiful bronzes, in particular a Herakles attacking a centaur,62 are in the mixed Lysippo-Scopaic manner. There are also traces of Praxitelean influence in her art.

These cosmopolitan collecting centres cannot tell us much of the methods of Hellenistic art. Our best resource is to examine more closely the works of certified origin. Ephesos is, however, important for its school of copyists. The marble copies of the Attalid dedications were perhaps made here, and Agasias, the author of the Borghese Fighter,63 was an Ephesian by birth, although a Rhodian by education.